Discussion: The 'Russia is imperialist' thesis is wrong

June 18, 2014 -- Truthout, posted at Links International Journal of Socialist Renewal with the author's permission -- The
violent coming to power of a rightist regime in Kyiv, Ukraine in late February
2014 has opened an exceptionally dangerous political period in Europe. For the
first time since World War II, a European government has representatives
of fascist parties as ministers. These are the ministers of the armed
forces, prosecution service and agriculture, and deputy ministers of national
security (police), education and anti-corruption.

“Mainstream”
parties alongside the fascists in government, including the elected president, are
committed to an austerity project of economic association with Europe that will
see much of the manufacturing base of the country further degraded or dismantled.
The consequences for agricultural production are also likely to be dire.

The Kyiv
regime has launched a civil war in the southeast of the country to quash
popular movements demanding political and economic autonomy for their regions. Elsewhere
in the country, the government or the fascist parties and militias allied to it
are seriously repressing the right of political association and expression.

Hundreds
have died from the regime’s violence in the east and south. Tens of thousands
have been driven from their homes in the southeast regions of Donetsk and
Luhansk. Petro Poroshenko is a billionaire who was elected president on May 25,
2014, in an election that saw a 25 per cent decline in voter participation compared
to the last election in 2010. Touted as a “man of peace” by a deluded and
deeply compromised Western media, he is taking the regime’s civil war and
repression to new heights of violence.

The
repression and civil war follow the humbling referendum decision by the
majority of the people of the Crimea region in March to secede from Ukraine.

The
regime’s actions are fully backed by the governments of the NATO military
alliance. They are providing key training and hardware to the Ukraine army and
to the rightist and fascist militias that are directing the army or fighting
alongside it. They have dispatched their own soldiers, fighter aircraft and
warships to Ukraine’s neighbouring countries and ocean waters. NATO threatens
the autonomy movements and the working class and nations as a whole of Ukraine
and Russia.

All of
this presents a huge responsibility for progressive forces in the world to mobilise
against the violence in Ukraine and protest our own governments’ collusion. Yet,
most liberal and moderate left forces in Europe and North America are turning a
blind eye to events. More disquieting still, many on the radical left are cautious
and hesitant. Campaigns such as Solidarity with the
Antifascist Resistance in Ukraine in Britain are too rare and need to be
emulated.

What
explains the hesitations? There are several reasons, but two overriding ones
are a misreading of the political and economic forces that are driving the
conflict, and a fear of association with the Russia government being near-universally
labelled by Western governments and their propaganda machines as an aggressor.
It is vital to set the record straight on both counts.

Russian ‘imperialism’ and the Ukraine conflict

Much of left
commentary in the West and in Ukraine and Russia presents Russia and its capitalist
elite as “imperialist”. To their credit, many on the left nonetheless identify
the NATO powers and Ukraine’s billionaire elite as the aggressors in the Ukraine
conflict and are speaking out against it. This is in the best tradition of the
movement 10 years ago against the war waged by the US against Iraq. At that
time, it was correctly argued that the reactionary essence of Saddam Hussein and
his regime was no excuse not to protest the war. Today, whatever one’s
appreciation of Russia’s president Vladimir Putin and the government he leads, there
is an elementary duty for the left and progressives to speak out against the
Kyiv regime’s bloody war.

But that’s
apparently a hard decision for some to make in the face of the vast propaganda
campaign saying that Russia is aiding and abetting “pro-Russian separatists” in
eastern Ukraine and may even be poised to invade and seize Ukrainian territory.

The false
depictions of Russia have a ring of credibility for some. After
all, don’t some of the autonomy fighters voice sympathy for joining the Russian
Federation? Isn’t there a tragic history of Great Russian domination of the
Ukrainian nation? Didn’t Russia (or its Soviet predecessor) invade and pummel
the small nations of Afghanistan and Chechnya not so long ago?

It’s
important to view the regime/NATO violence in Ukraine an assault against all the peoples of the broader region—not
just Ukrainians but also Russians and other nationalities and republics. The
assault builds upon the successes of far right political forces which came to control
and divert the Maidan protest movement of late 2013/early 2014.

A new and
highly informative article by Viktor Shapinov of the Borotba political
association in Ukraine (translated by Renfrey Clarke and available here) argues that the Maidan
movement was fundamentally conservative and nationalist in its political and
social outlook, making it all the easier for the far right to come to dominate it.

Shapinov
writes:

By January [2014], the ideological and
political content of the Maidan was obvious to any unprejudiced observer. At
that time, we characterised what was occurring as “a liberal-nationalist revolt
with increasingly noticeable participation by the openly nazi elements of the
Right Sector”…

The Euromaidan is thus a movement initiated
and controlled by the largest oligarchs. Its political base consists of radical
nationalists and to a lesser degree of pro-Western liberals, while its social
base is made up of petty-bourgeois and declassed elements.

By contrast, the resistance movement in the
southeast is more proletarian in its composition…

What about
Russia’s territorial designs on Ukraine? The evidence doesn’t add up. All the
fear-mongering of a Russian military intervention has clearly been misleading
and deceptive. Russia has withdrawn its military forces from the Ukraine border.
It counsels moderation to the autonomy movements and says it won’t supply them
militarily. It is engaged in talks with a regime in Kyiv waging war along
Russia’s own border. Hardly the conduct of an aggressor.

What about
Crimea? Wasn’t that an imperialist takeover? Emphatically no. The appendix
below summarises the secession vote in March of this year and its aftermath. It
was the first time in history that the peoples of that region had an
opportunity to vote on their political status.

Russia as imperialist?

More
deeply, the claims of Russia as “imperialist” are disproven by the empirical,
economic and political evidence.

The role
of finance capital is the benchmark of any measure of the core nature of a
capitalist country. In Russia, it is nothing resembling that of the imperialist
countries. It’s the state, not finance capital, which plays the overriding,
directing role in Russia’s economy. The state happens to own much of the vaunted
oil and gas industries; so too in finance and much of manufacturing. The CIA Factbook explains some of the
consequences: “The protection of property rights is still weak and the private
sector remains subject to heavy state interference.”

Russia’s
recent economic history belies the “imperialist” label. Following the collapse
of the Soviet Union in the early 1990s, its constituent republics experienced
economic contractions unprecedented in post-World War II history. The collapse
rivaled that of global economic slump of the 1930s. Life expectancy of citizens
of the “new” Russia, for example, declined sharply. So did the new country’s social
welfare infrastructure, including health care, post-secondary education,
seniors' pensions, protection for disabled people, etc. Much of the former
Soviet Union’s developed industries disappeared or shrank to shadows of their
former selves.

The only
thing that saved Russia from the fate of former Soviet republics such as Ukraine
(whose per capita GDP today is one-fourth that of Russia) was its vast reserves
of petroleum, natural gas and precious and rare earth minerals. These found markets
in the imperialist countries and in China. But again, according to the CIA Factbook, “Russia's reliance on
commodity exports makes it vulnerable to boom and bust cycles that follow the
volatile swings in global prices. The government since 2007 has embarked on an
ambitious program to reduce this dependency and build up the country's high
technology sectors, but with few visible results so far.”

Russia
has used revenues from oil and gas exports to keep major industries operating.
A few are, sort of, globally competitive—including aerospace, armaments and
metallurgy. But while its per capita GDP
may be well above that of Ukraine and other former Soviet republics, it’s not
in the same league by a long shot of the imperialist countries. It is roughly
one fourth, or less, that of North American and western European countries. It is
higher than Brazil’s but a lot lower than Portugal’s and just over half of
South Korea’s.

What about
Russia’s capital exports, another key indicator of whether a country sits in
the ranks of imperialist countries? In 2012, the stock of direct foreign
investment in Russia was $498 billion while the stock of investment abroad was
$387 billion. Compare this to Canada, with about one quarter the population of
Russia: $992 billion (domestic), $992 billion (abroad). Or Britain, with less
than half of Russia’ population: $1.3 trillion and $1.8 trillion, respectively
(all figures are 2012, from the CIA
Factbook).

Russia’s
neighbour China is another candidate, for some, of the “imperialist”
descriptor. Its manufacturing base is much more extensive than that of Russia.
But like Russia, the role of finance capital in directing the economy is not
comparable to that in the imperialist countries. The state plays the preponderant
role, including majority ownership of many enterprises. The imbalance between
domestic and foreign investment is greater in China than in Russia--$1.2
trillion (domestic) and $532 billion (abroad). There are no Chinese banks of
global stature, though they are growing domestically.

Chinese
manufacturing depends on infusions of US and other imperialist capital and technology.
It is hugely dependent on access to the markets of imperialist countries for
sales of the products it manufactures. And what does China do with its trade
surpluses, except to buy US treasury notes? The net result is that China is
paying an annual tribute to the capitalists of the imperialist countries. That
is hardly characteristic of an imperialist power, a nuclear-armed one to boot.
It is, rather, a sign of dependency.

A US economist writes

For all
the trend to describe Russia as “imperialist”, little substantive analysis has
been written to try and prove the claim. All the more welcome, then, is a new
essay by US Marxist economist Sam Williams. He has recently published a 30-page
essay on his website blog, A Critique of Crisis Theory. The headline of
the essay asks, “Is Russia imperialist?” The answer Williams provides is a
resounding “no’. Here are some excerpts:

The countries that are richest in finance
capital—not necessarily richest in industrial capital—are the imperialist
countries that economically exploit all other capitalist countries in the
world…

In a country rich in finance capital, there
is in addition to the extremely rich people found in all capitalist
countries—for example, the Russian and Ukrainian “oligarchs”–there is a large “middle
class” of “modest savers”. This middle class comes to include the more
privileged upper levels of the working class, who may own some mutual funds or
be beneficiaries of pension funds through various job-related retirement plans
[and, importantly, who are owners of real estate]…

What is the relative position of Russian
banks today? If Russia today is not only capitalist, which it indeed is, but
also imperialist, we would expect Russian banks to be increasingly prominent in
the world, since the “great” universal banks are the most important
organizations of finance capital. The publication Global Finance lists the
world’s 50 biggest banks as of 2012 in terms of assets. Despite the size and
natural wealth of Russia, not a single Russian bank appears on the list…

According to the Jan. 31, 2014, Wall
Street Journal, based on assets of the
world’s 100 biggest banks, only two Russian banks, OAO Sberbank and OAO VTB,
appear. They come in at number 54 and 94, respectively. Sberbank evolved from
the old Soviet savings bank system—in Russian, Sberbank means savings bank.
Even today, 51 percent of its stock is owned by the Russian central bank, which
itself is state owned. According to Wikipedia, the Russian Federation state
owns 60.9 percent of OAO VTB. While both banks today are universal banks, they
are still quasi—state enterprises…

The Crédit Suisse
Global
Wealth Databook 2012 [link]
divides the countries of the world into four categories according to wealth—not
income—per adult. This is a rough proxy for the average amount of finance
capital that is owned by individuals in each country, since finance
capital—stocks, bonds, money market funds and bank accounts—form the great bulk
of wealth in today’s world…

The top group, with over US $100,000 average wealth per adult, pretty much
defines the imperialist countries, including the “white colony” of Israel.
These countries are the United States—no surprise here—Canada, all the
countries of Western Europe with the exception of Portugal but none of the East
European countries. Australia, New Zealand, Japan, Iceland, Finland, Norway,
and Sweden are also among the countries in the top group…

Today’s Russia is very far indeed from becoming an imperialist country, and, if
anything, is in danger of falling into the fourth tier where Ukraine already
is.

Williams goes
on to explain that a defining feature of imperialism in today’s world is its military
alliances. The four big imperialist military alliances are NATO (North Atlantic
Treaty Organization), ANZUS (Australia-New Zealand-United States
Security Treaty--1951), SEATO (South East Asia Treaty
Organization--1954), NORAD (North American Aerospace Defense Command). To this
can be added the “Five Eyes” spying alliance of the US, UK, Canada, Australia
and New Zealand. Where are the comparable alliances of Russia and China? They
do not exist.

Williams
provides a specific example of the extensive deindustrialisation that has beset
the republics of the former Soviet Union, choosing the city of Konstantinovka
in Ukraine. Less than 30 years ago, the city employed 15,000 workers in its
glass factories. Today, there are fewer than 600 workers. He goes on to write:

What many of the workers involved in the
anti-Maidan movement [in eastern Ukraine] want is not simply the reversal of
the February [2014] coup in Kiev. What they really want is the restoration of
the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. This is shown by the Soviet flags that
compete with the tri-color flags of the bourgeois Russian Republic and the
double eagles of the Russian nationalists, the complaints of Western
correspondents about widespread “Soviet nostalgia”, and the defense of the
statues of Lenin…

And this is why the anti-Maidan movement is
such a threat not only to imperialism but to Russian capitalists and their
representative, Vladimir Putin. This explains why Moscow is doing everything it
can to cool down the movement.

The only real solution to the Ukraine crisis
is the restoration of workers’ power and workers’ ownership of the means of
production through a revived Union of Soviet Socialist Republics, which itself
must inevitably be part of a still broader movement that will ultimately involve
the workers of the entire world.

National defence of Ukraine and Russia

If the foregoing
analysis is correct--that Russia is not imperialist and is, rather, a hybrid
capitalist state and economy--then the resistance to capitalist and NATO
penetration of Ukraine and ultimately Russia assumes an important dimension of
national defence that Marxists and other progressives need to recognise and
voice. It behooves an international solidarity movement to oppose the violence
of the Kyiv/NATO war and the specific threats against the Ukrainian and Russian
nations. Just as was done during the wars against Iraq and Afghanistan and as
is needed in the face of the ongoing imperialist threats against Iran.
Such an approach counters the harmful “plague on both your houses” attitude that
makes a false equivalency between the threats of imperialism and the actions of
the Russian government. That attitude is an obstacle to the elementary
obligation to defend those who come under attack by imperialism and risks serving
as a cover for betrayal.

Recognition
of the regime in Russia as less than imperialist does not diminish the crucial
importance for the peoples of Russia and eastern Europe to struggle against capitalism
and fight for socialism. On the contrary, it provides fertile ground to forge
alliances with those who, while not yet convinced of the need for socialism,
are opposed to war and fascism and defend the national rights of countries
under attack by imperialism."]

Appendix: On the political evolution of the
Crimea region, by Roger Annis

1. The
people of Crimea voted in their majority in March 2014 to secede from Ukraine
and join the Russian Federation. While it is true the referendum was rushed and
did not leave a lot of space for opponents of federation with Russia to voice
their views, it is also true that it was held under the shadow of the repression
and threat of military intervention by the new, rightist regime in Kyiv and its
allied, fascist gangs. The launching by the regime one month later of a civil
war against the people of southeastern Ukraine is proof that the threat against
Crimea was real and imminent. Ukraine socialist Sergei Kirichuk explained in a recent
interview: “Not all people in Crimea were happy about the annexation to
Russia. But now they watch TV and see the Odessa massacre, the civil war and
the bombing of apartment blocks in Donetsk, and they say to each other, ‘Thank
god that we are not affected’.”

2. Sixty
years earlier, Crimea was transferred to the authority of the Ukraine Soviet
Republic by administrative fiat of then-leader of the Soviet Union, the
Ukrainian Nikita Khrushchev. When the USSR imploded four decades later, no
plebiscite was held in Crimea to let people decide their national status. Crimeans
travelled with the passport of the old Soviet Union and most are culturally and
linguistically Russian. Ukraine's post-Soviet, elite class of billionaires oppose
or cannot agree upon a right of the distinct peoples or regions within the
country to exercise even a modest form of political autonomy (that would resemble,
for example, the powers exercised by provinces in Canada or states in the
United States).

3. There
was no Russian military “invasion” of Crimea in February-March 2014. Russian
naval and land forces were stationed in Crimea according to a treaty between
Russia and Ukraine. Captured Ukraine military equipment was returned to that
country. Many members of the Ukraine armed forces stationed in Crimea resigned
their commissions and applied to join the Russian armed forces.

4. In
Crimea today, sections of the population are working to preserve elements of
the de facto autonomy the region exercised during pre-2014 Ukrainian rule,
including freer rights to protest compared to what is in Russian law.